Per Qoutes from CBC and BBC…
“Denmark has introduced what is believed to be the world’s first tax on foods containing saturated fat. The Danish government is applying a surcharge to foods with more than 2.3 per cent saturated fats, in a bid to combat obesity and heart disease.
The new tax will be levied on food such as butter, milk, cheese, pizza, oils and meat. It means customers will be paying about $3 more per kilogram of saturated fats in a product. Prices rose Saturday in many grocery stores as the tax came into force, while some customers cleared out shelves earlier in the week to stock up on fatty favourites.
Food industry managers have complained that the tax will be a bureaucratic nightmare.in 2004, Denmark declared war on trans fats, making it illegal for any food to have more than two per cent of the artery-clogging oils. Austria has a similar law. In July 2010, Denmark imposed a tax on sugary junk food.
About 10 per cent of Danes are considered obese. Britain is the fattest nation in Europe; one third of children and nearly two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese.
The tax was approved by large majority in a parliament in March as a move to help increase the average life expectancy of Danes. Denmark, like some other European countries, already has higher fees on sugar, chocolates and soft drinks, but Linnet Juul said he believes the country is the first in the world to tax fatty foods
In September, Hungary introduced a new tax popularly known as the ‘Hamburger Law’, but that only involves higher taxes on soft drinks, pastries, salty snacks and food flavourings. The outgoing conservative Danish government planned the fat tax as part of a goal to increase the average life expectancy of Danes, currently below the OECD average at 79 years, by three years over the next 10 years.”
Sorry for two news stories in a row, but this one amazed me and made me laugh at the same time, Boy is my cow, goats or sheep in trouble now, that rich, sweet wonderful raw milk is so, so bad, that its gonna have to be taxed! Wait, I bet my chickens are next, are you going to put a tax on the fact that my eggs are whole and farm fresh? Or are you only going to tax the duck eggs cause they have more fat in them?
Want to eat butter instead of oil based margine, we will tax you, want to eat cheese, something that has been consumed by humans for thousands of years, we will tax you, don’t even look at the sour cream! Slowly back away from that glass of whole milk..
Sorry, I am being a little silly there but honestly, I can understand and even support the idea of taxing processed food that is heavy in fat/sugar/salt, I don’t have a issue that locally that they removed pop and junk food from the schools, but I am not surprised in anyway to find out that the kids are just going next door of the school and get it there.
The idea that in the states that the fast food giants are trying to push a program that would allow them to accept food stamps and yet farmers markets can’t or won’t is enough to make my ears steam.
Can we please keep whole food in the hands of the peaple..
I’m openning this one up to you guys, do you think its a good idea, that the general population is to heavy and that the goverment should do whatever they believe is a good idea to help control this issue, or do you even believe that is what this is about? Or is it just a way to get more tax money in a time that all goverments are looking for ways to get a little more?
Just another Day on the Farm 
Money, money, money, money.
Oh, and to answer your question…money.
Andrea, LOL, Now I have that song in my head.. but I agree, I think money is hugely involved in this choice.
I strongly prefer to eat unprocessed, or minimally processed foods. I eat butter not margarine, I’m not sure what you have to do to a fat to make margarine, but I’m pretty sure it’s not good. If I want a spreadable fat I will mix it myself, with butter as the main ingredient. I can sympathise with what they are trying to do, but agree with you, that the problem is processed foods, not high fat whole foods. I believe it is the hidden calories which do damage, not the up front high fat foods. An unprocessed high fat food is tasty and only a little is required to get all the taste and textural benefits. High fat ingredients in home cooked foods help people feel satisfied more quickly and the body does require a little saturated fat. If people cooked their own foods and could make choices about what to put in them, then their weight would be a consequence of what they choose to include, instead of being mysterious to them.
I am overweight, I know exactly why and how this relates to the diet I feed myself, it’s not a consequence of manufacturers hiding fats in processed foods to make them taste better. If I wanted to change my weight I could by making different choices in portion size and the ingredients in my food.
Queen, Very Thoughtful comment, and I agree, I would raither see folks eat real food in smaller amount then to see that choice taken away because of even higher food costs.
I think there’s a lot more to it than just money. The same people who make big bucks feeding people crap that makes them fat (and lazy and clouds their thinking) are now taxing them for eating it. Let them use food stamps. That does look like a financial issue. Big Pharma makes big bucks from our sick-care system, pays lobbyists (and politicians) to fund the charade on cancer or AIDS or the flu or whatever, but you never hear any of them say, “Stop MAKING poison into things that look like food.”
What we have here is another example of the Hegelian Dialectic. Or: If (A) my idea of freedom conflicts with (B) your idea of freedom then (C) neither of us can be free until everyone agrees to be a slave.
Yeah, money is nice to have but power and control is where it’s at. ‘Whatever you do, don’t allow people to live with the consequences of their decisions, make them live with the consequences of our decisions.’
Natural trans fat and essential amino acids that come from your fresh milk are beneficial and quite different from the hydrogenated trans fats found in processed foods. This makes your cow more of a danger because by eating the GOODies produced at home, it might keep you away from the “health” industry. Limit who can get it by prohibiting the use of food stamps.
In a nutshell, your cow should not be taxed, she should be jailed!
Hi Pam,
Interestings thoughts, It reminds me very much of the idea’s in stuffed and Starved book, I can certainly see your point that they seems quite concerned about those of us that are producing more and more of our families food on our own land, it must be effected the bottom line. Thankfully my place is certified as farm land, so I am legally allowed to grow food and raise animals.
Just stumbled on this, what timing!
http://healthfreedoms.org/2011/10/01/wi-judge-food-nazi-no-right-to-cow-its-milk-or-food-choice/
Wow, No right to owning a cow, using its milk or to have a right to choose our own food, that’s very scary, I hope that it gets overturned!
What would make more sense, if it’s possible to put a positive spin on this story at all … is a progressive tax.
The more processed a ‘food’ is, the higher the tax. The more chemicals in it, the higher the tax. The further it has to travel to reach a retail outlet, the higher the tax. The larger the energy footprint to create the packaging, the higher the tax. The more human rights abuses accrued in it’s creation, including the four previous conditions, the higher the tax.
Will, Very true and if they were doing that, I would in fact support it, I would love to see the costs of the energy footprint used to create the packaging, the higher the tax, It might help remove those single serving cups and packing!
Butter is not what makes people fat. It’s a sedentary lifestyle and the lack of will power that does it for us. Sure, I bake a lot of cookies, but I exercise a few times a week as well. Totally in agreement with you that this is ridiculous.
Hi Juilie
I will agree that for alot of folks, its a matter of calories in, vs Calroies out, and our lifestye choices in regards to being active certainly makes a difference on how strong our bodies are regardless of size.
Pretty rediculous. Milk, cheese, meat and even oils are part of a balanced diet when consumed in moderation. It sounds like they are forcing the moderation part. I’ve spent some time in Denmark and let me tell you, it is an expensive place to live, and this makes me wonder how it will affect the average person there. Taxing junk food is one thing, but milk?? Dairy products?? I have a good friend who still lives there, it will be interesting to see how she feels about this and how it plays out.
Hi Daisy, Please report back on what your friends has to say about the idea of taxing the Dairy products, I would love to hear a first hand account, raither then just what the news is reporting.
Hey Farmgal, I just heard back from my Danish friend (she doesn’t use the computer much), she says the tax thing is a big joke. The stores are still allowed to put things on sale, so that is what they are doing. She also said that all of the talk about people being overweight is rediculous, and her 7 year old daughter is terrified of getting fat now because that is all they hear.
I find it almost impossible to reconcile the world today with the world I grew up in on the farm.
if mom grew it we ate it, if we milked it we drank it, if dad butchered it we ate it. There were nine children, no p0wer,running water or flush toilets. The oldest of us is now 69. We never had the flu or even very many colds, we were healthy! I cannot imagine what the world will be like when my
grandchildren are 69.Maybe by then food will be extinct as we know it and everyone will just eat a tube of soy paste a day so we will no longer be tall,short, fat,thin,strong,weak. We will just ALL BE
THE SAME.and life and the joy of growing,cooking food for your family will be in history,they will read about it and wonder how we ever did it!
mom
Having a little rant there momma 😉 I will hope and pray that this will not be the case, that there will still be those of us with land that will grow our own food, I believe that there will always be poor enough folks that they will continue to grow/raise and hunt their own food in parts of the country, and world, that even when our grandkids are 69, there will be real food.
Hi to you all and Happy Thanksgiving!
There are SO many great observations here, but is it all right if I expand it a bit?
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” There’s not much need for a health care system if you never get sick (matter-of-fact, the easiest place to get sick is in the hospital with the over-crowding, pitiful food, inadequate sanitation practices and toxifying pharmaceuticals.
“The best offence is a good defence.” A healthy immune system is our best defence, period. Which means having access to an affordable, varied, nutritious diet; getting adequate exercise (real jobs would solve this problem); taking/making more time to sleep and living in an environment with clean air/soil/water – all minimum requirements for a truly healthy society.
Locally(self) grown fruit & veg, cereal grains; milk, cheeses, butter, yogourt/kefir; eggs and meat animals: these should all be encouraged as much as possible and put off limits to taxation of this sort. We need more businesses close to home: all benefitting the environment, the economy and public health.
Deb – I can not agree more. So why are laws and policies like this being made and enforced? Who benefits from a sick populace? Could it be the corporate farms? We all know the moral obligation of a corporation is to make profit for the share holders. Could it be the ‘sick care system’? The docs, hospitals, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies (incorporated) with huge “investments” in your health status? Could it be the lawmakers that receive “contributions” from these industries?
We, the insignificant, can do nothing? Aw contrare, we can passively resist by growing and eating our own food, we can move our money into CDs in our local credit unions, we can spend the extra buck to help the mom and pop retailers instead of supporting huge corporations like WalMart, we can vote for the candidate that believes America is better off without the Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund, and simply stop (as much as possible) participating in this system that is rotten to the core. There are thousands of us chopping at the branches of this toxic plant but only one guy is chopping at the root.
Mom – “Maybe by then food will be extinct as we know it and everyone will just eat a tube of soy paste a day…” Better yet, how about Soylent Green?